


Fatherhood

by TwinVax



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Childbirth, F/M, Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Stream (Critical Role), halflings have a baby, non graphic descriptions of the aftermath of giving birth, spoilers up to episode 57
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 12:51:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18446933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwinVax/pseuds/TwinVax
Summary: Yeza and Veth meet their son.





	Fatherhood

The screaming behind the bedroom door stops, and Yeza waits, holding his hands tightly between his knees. He wasn’t able to do anything at all, when Veth’s water broke, and had only been marginally useful at getting the water bucket for the midwife. She had sent him out of the room after that, to wait instead of hover and worry. 

Why wouldn’t he worry though? She was his wife and best friend, and she was in pain. He couldn’t do anything about the pain, he knew, but he could be there to hold on to. Even if her grip was very strong, and he knew she would break his hand if she squeezed as hard as she probably would. 

So he sat in the hallway, and that was fine! He could wait for the midwife to help with the birth, to be outside until it was time for him to see his wife and baby. Expect it was excruciating, to hear Veth scream from the pain of childbirth, and be unable to be there. To not be able to see her through the door, to watch her give life to their child. To see the first few moments between mother and child after the pushing was over. 

So Yeza waited, listening to the muffled conversation of the midwife he couldn’t hear, knowing Veth was saying something back but her voice even quieter from exhaustion. Out in the hallway on his own, waiting to be let in to see his loves. 

Eventually, the door creaked open, and the midwife, a gnome in her middle ages but still young and wearing the standard clothes of a practitioner of healing magic, poked her head out, “Come in, but don’t be too loud, you’ll wake the boy.” 

The boy, their child was their son. Yeza smiled thinking of the things their family would do together, with him now added to him and Veth. There was a lot they would do to care for him, and teach him. They’d love him, and make sure he knew he was loved, and he wouldn’t have the same mistakes done to Veth and Yeza done to him. They’d make sure no one hurt him. 

Yeza stood and entered the room when the midwife moved aside, going to his wife where she sat up against the bed. Veth’s dark skin was flushed and shiny with sweat, her braids loose and handing down and stuck to her face, stringy and knotted in places. She looked so tired, but she smiled at him and looked so proud. 

“His name is Luke.” Veth whispered, the babe focused for the moment on his first meal, facing away from Yeza. He could see enough though of him, of Luke. 

His skin was lighter then Veth’s, but didn’t come close to Yeza’s own pale complexity. He also already had a full head of curls, though they looked soft and like they would be easy to break off or pull out with the wrong movement. He was a small baby, but Yeza hoped that was normal for newborns. He looked so wrinkled and squished together, though he knew that would work itself out, after being in a confined space for months. 

He was perfect, Luke was perfect, and when the child finished suckling his mother’s milk, and Veth wrapped him back up into his little green blanket, he opened his eyes and Yeza saw how blue they were. So unlike his and Veth’s own brown, but just as if not more captivating. 

Yeza took Veth’s hand, and she smiled as he kissed her temple, “He’s perfect, Huns Buns.” he said, picking him up into his own arms, letting the midwife guide him on the proper way to hold him. 

By the time he had figured it out and looked to Veth, she had fallen asleep in the bed, and Luke’s own blue eyes had closed. He looked to the gnome as she walked around, cleaning up the mess and fixing the bed sheets, making sure Veth was properly cleaned up and everything that needed thrown out or buried in the ground to help cultivate the plants was properly picked up and removed before she headed to the door. 

She looked back at him, where he stood beside the bed with Luke in his arms, and nodded, acknowledging him with a smile, “Welcome to fatherhood.” She said, and left the doorway. 

Yeza looked at his son and wife, and felt nothing except love for his new little family. 


End file.
